– More value in articles, videos and pictures leads to bookmarking and return visitors

– More conversations occur around websites that are maintained up to a high standard, eventually leading to constant traffic through many backlinks

The free Better Website Checklist (.PDF) contains about 50 questions to ask yourself about your website to make it better today. If you implement the changes suggested, your website will significantly improve, without having to spend even a penny!

At Greatwebsiteplans.com, we show you the necessary steps to building your own passive income online: from selecting a great niche keyword to building traffic to your website through guest blogging and social outreach.

If you follow instructions well, enjoy writing about at least one subject, you’ll find an idea that will work for you here.

Definitions

What is a passive income? It’s a source of income that requires no additional action on the part of the owner. Websites that require minimal updates and are forgotten by their owners yet continue to generate income are considered a passive income stream.

What is an affiliate website?An affiliate website generates income by referring users via a paid link or paid ad. Once the user clicks a paid ad, they may purchase the product advertised on the affiliate website. If they do, the site which referred them to the product or service will get a commission, a percentage of the sale.

Let’s get started!

STEP #1 – Pick a Subject You Enjoy That’s Easy to Talk About

It’s crucial that you enjoy the subject you’re about to build an entire website around. If you don’t enjoy and understand the topic you may not be able to address the needs and questions of your audience.

Consider a topic that’s close to heart and think of how you could acquaint others with this topic.

STEP #2 – Do Keyword Research Until You Find 15 Good Keywords

Although there are lots of ways to do keyword research, one way is to use Google’s own Keyword Planner. Another way is to use sites like Jaaxy.com, Moz.com, Long Tail Pro software and Kwfinder.com(FREE). For this walkthrough, we’ll start with Google’s tool called “Keyword Planner”.

You’ll need a Google Adwords account (FREE). You can skip the payment information until you see the menu: Home, Campaigns, Opportunities and Tools.

After signing in, click under Tools >> Keyword Planner:

Then click “Search for new keyword and ad group ideas”.

In the Keyword Planner sidebar, to the left hand side, make these selections:

Select United States

Average Monthly Searches over > 370

Select Medium and Low Competition.

Enter your subject.

In this case, Drawing is the subject that interests me and I find easy to talk about.

A. ANALYSIS AND EXPLORATION: KEYWORD RESEARCH

The first keyword results aren’t very good.

Most of these terms are “interest” terms, meaning people are looking to learn about drawing. Some of these are children, some are people wanting to watch a tutorial:

We want to find keywords that have a strong intent to purchase.

For example:

“Buy classical music concert tickets” is a strong intent.

“How to draw a horse” is an “interest” term without a strong intent to purchase. This person is likely interested in tutorial videos and don’t have a clear intent to purchase art products, or even a guide on how to draw horses. This is a generalization.

Avoid most keywords that lack ‘intent to purchase’

This is a generalization, not a rule.

Some interest-search keywords may be very good.

Use discretion, considering what the search term may mean to the searcher.

TRY AGAIN!

On my second page for the search, I found “drawing pencil” and “pencil drawing techniques”.

I think that the “drawing pencil” search is someone who wants to excel in their pencil drawings and may be inclined to upgrade from a plain pencil to a professional artist’s pencil.

They appear to have a purchase intent to at least consider a premium brand pencil. The pencil drawing techniques goes along with that intent – an artist who wants to level up their skills and this keyword fits with the first.

However, the traffic is a little low at 590 searches so let’s keep analyzing.

FINDING ADDITIONAL KEYWORD IDEAS

Let’s go to Ubersuggest.com and see what type of other searches go along with “drawing pencil”.

Here’s the result:

Drawing pencil set (a product)

Drawing pencil guide (a guide to using pencils, with a serious hobbyist intention)

Drawing pencil brands (a product)

Drawing pencil case (an accessory necessary for a collection of pencils owned or to be purchased)

Let’s go back to Keyword Planner.

This time around, I found a keyword that interests me as a subject for a subpage.

Architecture, dragons, art.

I believe that would make for an interesting and diverse artistic website with affiliate links to premium pencil sets, a pencil guide and pencil cases. Dragon art tutorials and architectural building pictures would really make it engaging.

I know I will be able to curate some images from Pinterest for dragon art

I know I will be able to write some very creative posts about dragon pencil drawings, even if I don’t draw them myself

I like architectural drawings and I know how to find bloggers that showcase great architectural sketches

I am growing more confident because I am very familiar with the subject and would be able to produce a lot of good writing with images, videos and more.

Let’s see what other ideas we can come up with. Open up Chrome to discover some Google Instant Search Result suggestions:

Drawing pencil set, architectural drawing software, drawing dragon books and drawing pencil set online all come up as keywords that could have a site built around them.

I see some potential in becoming an affiliate for software for architectural drawings, but that seems a little off topic for a pencil set-specific website. If I broaden the scope of my site too much, I may lose some specific searchers’ interest. It’s best to stick to one simple subject.

But there’s more work to be done before I finalize my decision.

QUICK TIPS FOR FINDING THAT PERFECT NICHE KEYWORD

Explore many keyword ideas that spontaneously interest you

Do look up your favorite categories on your favorite sites for ideas

Try favorite shopping sites, review sites, news sites for ideas

Branch off at any time to explore the possibilities

Save The Best using a document with columns that include Traffic, Competition, Comments

B. EXPLORE AFFILIATE PROGRAMS AND DETERMINE PRODUCT PRICE RANGE

I am going to confirm the price range of the pencil sets that this new affiliate website will feature.

First, I need to find an affiliate program that offers a good commission percentage on each sale I refer.

The product I am looking for has to cost around $40-$60 dollars, otherwise the commissions will be too low for the effort I will be applying.

This is my goal, but there may be a good affiliate offer or the product may be “high volume” or “popular” to justify a lower price tag.

Consider affiliate programs that offer 30-90 day cookies and longer.

Seek a good percentage (8% to 45%+) and a good website that you’d buy from or seriously consider.

Choose affiliate products you believe will truly benefit your customers, not those that would be bad for them or that you think are a rip-off.

The top result is a familiar brand to me: Blick Art Supplies. I go shopping at Blick stores from time to time for art supplies.

Use Google search to find an affiliate program:

Your Subject + affiliate

Hit Search

The Blick affiliate program has an “up to 10%” commission on all sales you refer as an affiliate.

This is better than Amazon.com, but I have not had any experiences with the Blick affiliate program to say whether they will have high enough volume of sales, and I have no information on how frequently artists shop for these types of pencils.

The drawing pencils Classroom pack has a $58.25 price tag. It’s for classrooms. This is good if my site were focused on art teachers and classroom art, but I’m certain most artists will only need one pack which is about $20 and with shipping, slightly more than $20. That’s low, but if the volume of sales are high enough and the brand is popular, then it is still a pretty good choice for a first website.

I also found a set that has lots of color pencils, priced at more than $300 dollars.

This is good news for our keyword.

STEP #3 Verify Competition is Really Low

A. SOFTWARE COMPETITION CHECK

Using KwFinder.com, an automated web-based software that calculates SEO competition, we can confirm that the competing sites are poorly optimized and can be outranked based on the type of backlinks they have and their Page Rank.

The Keyword Finder site is another way to find great niche keywords – feel free to explore it to find a good keyword and use the LAZR keyword analyzer to validate your choice. We created the LAZR tool to help you confirm a good keyword manually by asking you a set of key questions. You’ll have to do some searches but after doing a few of them and discarding the low performing keywords, you’ll be quicker without the tool.

In Keyword Finder, Set Location to USA

Look at the SEO column to verify searches are over 500>

Look at the Search column to verify SEO competition is lower than 30.

Here is the result for the drawing pencil set keyword I am considering seriously:

21 SEO competition – this is a good sign.

590 Searches (any location) – this is OK.

B. MANUAL COMPETITION CHECK IS CRUCIAL

Here is ONE way to do basic keyword competition analysis WITHOUT software like KeywordFinder.com, Moz.com or any other site.

GOOD SIGN: Competitors who have poorly SEO optimized pages – this means they don’t have the keyword phrase in the Title of the page and the description of the page

GOOD SIGN: The page1website.com/ranking-page-title-is-partial-or-not-optimized-at-all.html doesn’t have the “exact keyword phrase” in it at all or it is “partial match”!

GOOD SIGN: There are lots of results but none of them seem to answer the search query – random or unrelated terms means Google doesn’t have much to serve.

VERY GOOD SIGN: A Yahoo Answers page ranks in the top 10 results.

VERY GOOD SIGN: A Quora page ranks in the top 10 results.

VERY GOOD SIGN: A Wikipedia page ranks in the top 10 results.

VERY GOOD SIGN: A Quora page or Forum with 0-1 PR is in the top 10 results.

BAD SIGN: Several sites have a high PR 3-8 and a lot of high quality backlinks.

BAD SIGN: The lowest ranking sites have strong social media base. For example, a Facebook fan page with 1,000,000 likes and active community.

BAD SIGN: The lowest ranked site is highly SEO optimized, looks attractive, modern and has a great community built around it based on a cursory glance at testimonials, comments, etc.

VERY BAD SIGN: Every site is optimized for the keyword in the title and description, every URL has the keyword in it.

VERY BAD SIGN: Several sites are focused on your product of choice, and it isn’t merely a category – the whole shopping site is about this highly specific product.

Now let’s use the Open SEO Stats extension for Chrome to research the competitors ourselves. There will be a little icon to the top of the browser on the right hand side that will tell us whether a site has high Page Rank or a low Page Rank .

We will use this tool to do a manual check to ensure the competition is truly low, instead of relying on software and websites to judge competition strength and saturation of the search results for the search terms we are interested in for our new pencil set affiliate website.

C. FINDING QUALIFYING INTENTION KEYWORDS

But just before we do that, I return to the Keyword Planner and put in “drawing pencils” and followed “drawing with colored pencils” to find this result:

Best drawing pencils

What’s so significant about this result? Whenever you find “best” in a product search term, it means someone is interested in finding the most high quality product in a category. This product will have good reviews, usually, and they may decide to buy it. This is a generalization.

Sometimes a more specific search term + product means that the searcher has a specific need and is willing to do extra research to find it. This can be an opportunity if the item is high priced and the affiliate programs have a great landing sales page.

Now let’s check the competition for this new keyword we just found – take a CLOSE look at the results.

Amazon.com has two positions.

Toadhollowstudio.com has an under-optimized URL and has page rank of 2

Same applies to ArtistisandIllustrators.co.uk – their page title is not optimized at all and their URL structure is strange.

Finally, Blick.com is in 6th place without any optimization.

Last, a 0 PR page by Artistdaily.com.

All this is a good sign.

Amazon simply has a top search position because it is an old, trustworthy marketplace. It has a category for best art supplies, so Google search serves this result as #1. But the true competitors are Artistdaily.com, Toadhollowstudio.com and Artistsandillustrators.co.uk.

Of 3 actual websites ranking for “best drawing pencils”, ONE can easily be topped by our own affiliate website. It’s Artistdaily.com, with a Page Rank of 0.

D. ADDITIONAL WAYS TO ANALYSE COMPETITION BY HAND

You can verify that competition is low by checking the word count of the page that is ranking. Pages that contain 2000+ words tend to rank on page 1 search results in Google. If we can find a page that is below 2000 words, then we have a sure chance to get this position.

Visually spot-check each of the 10 or so sites: Do they look ancient and unpleasant to use for modern mobile users? Can you design a better site with a simple responsive WordPress template theme?

Copy and paste the text of the ranking page into Microsoft Wordand do a Word Count via the “Review” tab. You can also use Google Docs for this.

Result:

The low ranking page has 3,561 words, just over 2,000. This means the comments section on this site is helping it to rank. I know I can write 5,000 words in great detail about these pencils if I organize a nice list of product names and a criteria for reviewing them one at a time. Then I can link out to pages where I go into depth about each product.

This seems exciting! There is a lot of content on this page alone that can be paraphrased and rewritten into professional drawing pencil information for searchers.

Focus, reorganize, rewrite and optimize your new affiliate site based on the weaknesses of pages that are ranking currently.

Be creative!

Sites that lack great videos, great big pictures, excellent headlines and easy to browse menus are all sites vulnerable to a better competitor.

Check the competitor sites on your mobile phone to see if they are poorly made, slow loading, etc.

Think of how you can improve on what they did and produce a better search result: Your Own Website!

STEP #4 – Prioritize Around 1-3 Keywords With a High Volume of Searches

Jot down all your keywords in a table using spreadsheet software like Excel, or simply use Microsoft Word’s table feature. Insert a two-column table and examine your traffic column after you’ve copied their numbers accordingly:

I chose drawing pencil set as a main keyword because 1) it is an intent keyword and a product. 2) the results for drawing pencils appear to be poorly shared on social media, which is a factor for ranking in Google.

Since I know how to do social media promotions, this will be easy for me:

Q: HOW MANY KEYWORDS SHOULD ONE SITE FOCUS ON?

It depends on your choice and research. Having 15 very low competition keywords lined up for your next dozen blog posts will be beneficial. In this post I am sharing just 5 with you that I chose. If I spend a bit more time researching and verifying competition strength, I may find better ones.

Get more keywords and keep a good record of the key details like traffic and comments about the competition strength.

It’s not all about backlinks anymore, site speed plays a part as well as mobile friendly CSS.

Q: HOW MUCH TRAFFIC SHOULD ALL YOUR KEYWORDS MAKE UP?

Go for 2,000+ to 5,000+ total searches for all terms combined and more if possible. You may not rank for many of these terms on page 1, but you will move up in search engine rankings gradually over time as your domain and pages age.

The site that I could build from the keywords we researched together amounts to about 11,060 searches from the United States alone. These traffic numbers aren’t accurate and vary from service to service, so I take it as a generous estimation not as a reality.

In an ideal scenario, if we rank on page 1 in the top 3 positions, we would get a sizable amount of traffic for pencil set-related searches. Since it will likely be more difficult for you to build your website (doing it for the first time), you should take into consideration mistakes that could keep you out of that page 1 position you hoped for.

Keep practicing finding keywords. If it takes a few weeks to make a final decision, then take that time. It is best to find the right set of keywords that you can truly get traffic for than to spend all your time the next few months building a site that won’t be able to attract the right searchers.

Q: WILL I GET INSTANT IDEAL RESULTS?

Most of the keywords you find, you will not be getting instant results. Ranking takes time and many of the keywords you select, you may not get to page 1 as a beginner, employing only a handful of practices that help your site to rank.

With practice and more understanding of the fundamentals of ranking your site higher, such as strong guest blogging, broken backlink building, your site will have a greater success.

But those are advanced steps that will be covered at another time.

Q: WHAT IS THE HARDEST PART OF BUILDING AN AFFILIATE WEBSITE?

It’s the planning and keyword selection phase.

You may do a good job on content, but if you selected the wrong keyword (and there may be a lot of reasons it is a bad keyword), it will be harder to get to page 1 search results and getting the boost in traffic needed to get your first little bit of earnings.

Let’s focus on selecting a good set of 10-15 keywords slowly. Repeat the above steps until you have a document with 15 keywords. This is the most time-intensive step next to initial content creation for your affiliate website. The rest, like writing content, should be easy if you chose a subject that you love discussing at length.

COMMON MISTAKES DURING THE KEYWORD RESEARCH STAGE:

Choosing a keyword too quickly (in one day or even 10 minutes)

Choosing keywords with vague intent

Choosing difficult to rank for keywords

Choosing a poor performing affiliate product

Poor research guidance was followed

Not getting sound advice from successful niche website owner(s) that builds them frequently

Not looking deeply enough for the right keyword

We recommend you pick a few keywords and study keyword research extensively. Learn how to identify good niche keywords that are extremely easy to rank for. Look for better tools. Do reverse searches (by analysing Flippa.com sites that are truthfully earning money and doing Google searches on those niches).

Take a few days or weeks to select the best, lowest competition keyword with a great affiliate product you can promote honestly.

STEP #5 – Begin Writing Titles and Writing Your Site In A Document

Now most people who blog or build websites on the web use WordPress’ console to type in their posts.

In our experience, we’ve found WordPress’ console is too distracting and the simplicity of a text document on Windows is best for focusing on the content writing part of building an affiliate website for a WordPress based website.

A. CREATE A DOCUMENT, SAVE IT WITH THE NAME “MY WEBSITE PAGES”

You can come up with a brand name later, for now your site needs pages optimized for the keywords you selected. Here is how I structured my document:

Title 1: Finding the Best Drawing Pencil Set Made Easy

Keyword: Drawing Pencil Set

Title 2: Choosing the Right Drawing Pencils for Architectural Drawings

Title 12 (viral article): My Massive Collection of Art Pencils: What I Recommend To You From 25 Years of Experience

Keyword: None.

Comment: I don’t have what it takes to write this article, but I know I can find someone who can. Although an investment, it can give my site an added legitimacy, featuring an interview with an artist I know personally or via Deviantart.com. If the article is 10,000 words with a video interview, I know my site will show up on page 1 for art, pencils and will likely get lots of attention on Social media sites when I share it to about 5-8 of them, including forums.

Comment: This is a synonym-keyword going off course a little…but my thought process is, if I can speak to both an artist who wants to learn how to use advanced pencil techniques and is also interested in architecture (or is in school to become an architect), then I can build some informative articles that will engage yet another audience. Your site may have similar ‘journey’ topics.

Remember to return to your main keyword, even if you veer off topic in a few posts because you are inspired by some thing.

Title 14: Two of the Best Drawing Pencils I Use Everyday

Keyword: Best Drawing Pencils

Comment: I will have to buy two pencils from the hundreds available at my local Blick store. Then when I write this article, I can truthfully share pictures of Blick branded pencils. This is better than simply grabbing pictures from Blick’s own site. A Vimeo video is also an option.

Title 15: The Cretacolor Drawing Pencil Sets: Worth Your Time?

Keyword: Drawing Pencil Sets

Title 16: My Favorite Drawing Dragons Book

Keyword: Drawing Dragons Book

Title 17: Tips on How to Use Architectural Drawing Software

Keyword: Architectural Drawing Software

PROGRESS KEY

RED:Incomplete – To Be Written.

BLUE: Complete – Published.

QUICK TIPS FOR MORE TRAFFIC

It’s important to write down the keywords you have discovered right under the titles. Later on, it will help you to quickly remember what the post is supposed to help your site rank for!

Use the keywords properly in the TAG and CATEGORY of each post.

Use the keyword in each post on at least one of the images within the post (the ALT tag).

What’s great about the topic is, I can easily find all the resources I need to write each post. I know the subject, enjoy it, and I have an art store where I can interview people for even better content. I can also write in greater detail about the subject because I’m so comfortable about it.

Now it’s time to prepare the actual content for each post, right in the document.

Writing all 15 posts will take a few days but you can do 3-5 posts at a time and add onto them as you go along.

Aim for 2000 words. Use headings, numbered and tabbed lists and lots of pictures.

ALWAYS use the keywords, as illustrated above – exactly as you found them.

Save the document for when you buy the domain and set up WordPress.

Copy, Paste, Optimize: Once you’ve bought a domain name and set up your WordPress installation, you can then create each post in separate tabs and optimize them all at the same time: Copy and paste the articles, titles and keyword which will become the tag and, in the case of the main keywords you have selected, the category of the post.

C. PREPARING THE AD

Go to the affiliate program you signed up for, pick out a good 320×320 ad or some banner you wish to try.

Save the code and have it ready in a folder that is clearly labelled. You’ll need just one ad to get your affiliate WordPress website built.

Now It’s Your Turn

What do you think? Is this a process that could work for you?

Now that you have seen how to do basic keyword research, it’s time to consider a short, catchy brandable domain name for your site.

A. IDEAS FOR YOUR DOMAIN BRAND NAME

Wordoid.com – Generate a brand name idea and improve on the idea with your own spin

Now that you have a good name for your website, check out a .org or .com via services like Bluehost or Namecheap. Install WordPress using the CPANEL instructions provided after you purchase 1 year hosting / 1 year domain registration with WHOIS protection.

Since there are probably thousands of tutorials on installing WordPress via Softaculous and other web host control panels, we will not go into detail about setting up WordPress on your own host. Here are some links if you are unfamiliar with this process:

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have learned the basics of keyword research and exploration. You also know how to build an affiliate website. Even if you don’t write the articles completely in one night (which is possible), you can post the titles as placeholders and return to them day after day, adding a little here and there.

You now know about:

1. The free websites you can use for successful keyword research

2. The key factors of evaluating your page 1 competitors for any given keyword

3. How many keywords we recommend using and where to use them

4. How to write a framework for the first 15+ posts of your affiliate website

5. How to find an affiliate program

6. How to get a domain and hosting and install WordPress

7. How to install a text widget with your affiliate ad above the fold

WHAT’S NEXT?

We encourage you to continue to learn about keyword research this week.

Explore, find and save: Use low competition keywords with a high volume of organic searches in post titles and tags.

Keyword researching skills are extremely important for future posts. Organic search traffic will arrive at your website because of many low competition keywords, such as those you find using the steps outlined above.

A. ADD MORE POSTS USING LOW COMPETITION KEYWORDS YOU FIND

GOOD TO DO: The more content you publish regularly, the better for your website.

GOOD TO DO:The more you share your content on social media, the more traffic your site will get.

GOOD TO DO:The quality of your content must appeal to your audience, so do your best, work slower and always quality-check your site.

GOOD TO DO: Link relevant posts to each other within your website.

NOT RECOMMENDED: Let your site sit without new content for months.

NOT RECOMMENDED: Write post titles without any effort or exact match keyword.

BAD TO DO: Link frequently only to affiliate ads.

Once your site has some established authority through guest blog posts, good comments on authoritative blogs in your field, and has been aged long enough, your site will begin to rank for more competitive terms.

After writing more than a dozen engaging titles using the keywords you’ve selected, you have a good foundation for a passive income website.

Write the content, optimize your posts with great images, videos, quotes, statistics and relevant links to other websites.

If you would like to learn how to build an affiliate website, click here.

B. WATCH TRAFFIC GROW AND KEEP AN EYE ON REVENUE FROM THE AFFILIATE PROGRAM

The ads you’ve inserted in the widget may generate revenue for you once your traffic begins to grow. It depends on many factors how successful your site will be at generating an income.

Explore affiliate programs that fit well with your niche subject and update them as we’ve just shown you in your WordPress console via the Appearance > Widget section.

Sometimes you will find better affiliate programs, at other times, you will switch a product. Be sure it is a good one!

C. PASSIVE INCOME

In its initial stages, a passive income website isn’t passive – it requires a lot of hard work.

Once your site begins to have steady growing traffic, it will generate income that you can then reinvest into the site, to develop the content further.

You can then use some of the income generated to hire a regular writer (1 article per week or more) and a social marketing manager to help you with your Fan pages, Twitter and other social sites. This will strengthen your site’s return traffic if your content engages and connects with visitors.

Social media managers can foster relationships on your social accounts and create a following for your website’s latest content.

You can use sites like Upwork.com for part time assistants.

Hire a writer for a post 2-3 times per month and if possible invite them to have a Contributor account on the site. They can save drafts for you to review, optimize and publish from within the WordPress control panel of your site.

Hire a social media manager to boost referral traffic to your site and maintain site freshness.

Check in with your two helpers as needed and maintain the SEO health of the website as needed.

D. GET HELP

If it traffic doesn’t grow past 10 visitors per day, you may need some help. If you’re at month 6 and you haven’t made a penny, email us.

Long Tail Pro (PAID) – we don’t use this tool but there are good reviews on it. You can do most of this research using Google Adwords and the steps mentioned above but it takes longer doing it without software.

Kwfinder.com (FREE, FAST – OUR BEST CHOICE) – find keywords with low competition easily, find out how much traffic each keyword gets in the US. Limited free searches per day.

Ubersuggest.com (FREE, FAST) – find lots of long tail keywords that go along with your main keyword. Generate ideas for profitable niche keyword ‘tangents’ you wish to explore. Or if you run out of keywords for article titles, this is a great way to get more ideas.

Wordoid.com (EASY, FAST) – Generate a brand name idea and improve on the idea with your own spin